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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
Today marks the 700th edition of World Ocean Radio! Is it possible that I have been sending out these thoughts and reflections condensed into a five-minute weekly audio feature and podcast for 14 years? Today World Ocean Radio is available through AudioPort and the Public Radio Exchange, more than 60 syndicated stations in the US and abroad, Internet Radio on both coasts of Africa, World Ocean Observatory social media platforms to include FaceBook, Linked In, and Instagram, other podcast and partner organizations such as the American Shoreline Podcast Network, and the W2O website archive. From the enforced discipline of weekly observation has come four books, “The Once and Future Ocean – Notes toward a New Hydraulic Society” in 2015, “Aqua Terra – Reflections on the World Ocean” in 2020, and “Ocean Feeling” in 2023, and a new publication in preparation for 2024, “How the Ocean Will Save Civilization” – all these words and ideas amassed as waves of observation and opinion directed toward communication of the incontrovertible value of the world ocean, a repetitive succession of examples, emphasis, and explanation of how this beautiful, nurturing, enabling, and inspiring phenomenon of Nature is all-encompassing and connects us all.
But is anybody listening?
I ask that question too often. I will dive into speculative numbers, like a shadow among schooling possibilities, like a sharp upward line through a sea of statistics measuring audience as if such a thing could ever be captured by numbers. It is an absurd, yes, probably neurotic, exercise.
But the premise must remain, as a value statement and purpose: the world is dissolved into the ocean in all its forms, from freshwater to deep sea systems, through trade, emigration, finance, governance, and acculturation. There is a global community out there within the sound of my voice, and beyond the distant horizon, of Citizens of the Ocean who are the constituency of friends, neighbors, and strangers worldwide who depend on the ocean and all its manifestations of value for survival. By reaching them, today 8.1 billion strong, there is the hope and will-power required to address and redress the critical condition of this most powerful manifestation of our natural world into the future.
What an absurd calculation. What megaphonic ambition! What megalomaniacal presumption, you might respond. Surely there is a cure, or a safe place to isolate and be quiet, be still. Hard to find such a haven in this stressed and noisy world. But, actually, such a place does exist, as a universal, along every coastline, every lake and river shore, every harbor and quiet wetland, where we can go, even beyond the sound of World Ocean Radio, to examine what is necessary, what is true, what is right, and what we must do we sustain that reality, beyond every horizon and for ourselves.
One recent evening, I was leaving a restaurant, talking away to companions, as other pedestrians passed by headed elsewhere, headed home. One of these passers-by stopped and exclaimed “I know that voice. That’s World Ocean Radio,” and then went along on his way. That was for me a sudden, magic moment for me – a connection through the night and anonymous wavelength sound, of one person to another, through an individual reflection, not an exhortation, but a message that united that stranger’s voice and mine in a shared understanding and purpose.
If that is the prospect, I aspire to 700 hundred messages to come. Thanks for listening!
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
World Ocean Radio is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange and the Pacifica Network for use by college and community radio stations worldwide. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and at world ocean observatory dot org where the full catalog of World Ocean Radio episodes is searchable by theme.
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